Deep, cold dive

Santa Cruz didn't need another "Never Forget" sticker. Yet in February, with the flowers from Zuef Hesson's passing still fresh on the fence at Pleasure Point, this village that knows more about loss than most committed a family member to memory once more. On Feb. 2, Joel Roberts, a prominent and popular figure in the Santa Cruz surf scene in the 1990s, died homeless and alone in Quincy, Mass. He was 50.

A former commercial abalone diver, Roberts' 27-foot Radon, The Deeper Blue, was often seen bobbing in the channel (or fleeing the wide waves) at Maverick's, with photographers from Surfing Magazine leaning out over the gunnels to get the next cover shot. In 1995, he volunteered the boat to escort Frosty Hesson, Jay Moriarty and other paddlers across the Monterey Bay to raise awareness for Clean Water Day. It was The Deeper Blue that ferried Mark Foo on his final journey to shore after the drowned legend was pulled from the foam outside Pillar Point Harbor.

"Joel was always there to help you out," said Jeevan Kracht, who surfed and followed the transcendental meditation guru Sri Chinmoy with Roberts. "He was the kind of guy who would give you the wetsuit off his back."

Roberts' commercial diving career started at the bottom, scrubbing yacht hulls and keels in the Santa Cruz Small Craft Harbor in 1985. Originally from Cupertino, the buoyant 21-year-old with his bed of fine blond hair, blinding smile and jackal's laugh fit right in with the colorful cast of seafarers that gives Santa Cruz the feel of a pirate's port. Of course, he had to have a nickname. Fellow divers called him "El G" (short for "El Guapo," the Handsome One), after the villain in the movie "The Three Amigos," who had the same jangling chuckle.

Roberts won the one and only commercial license to harvest the highly regulated, and thus lucrative, abalone at the Farallon Islands off San Francisco in a lottery in 1986.

The clods of rock that jab upward through the ocean surface were dubbed "The Devil's Teeth" by author Susan Casey. A mere 30 miles due west of Twitter headquarters, by their sheer foreboding the Farallons have remained a wild, wind-bitten Avalon at the edge of the world. It's the kind of place medieval map makers might have described by simply scribbling "Here Be Dragons."

On his first day diving the Farallons for the exquisitely flavored red abalone, Roberts made $2,000 and was instantly hooked. There was only one catch: The waters surrounding the islands are home to the largest great white sharks in the world. They are snaggle-pussed behemoths known as "The Sisters" to the shark researchers there, who observe around 80 attacks on seals and sea lions at the islands in a single feeding season (August to April).

For protection, Roberts dove with a Glock 9mm pistol modified to shoot underwater. But if he wanted the weapon to be accurate, he had to wait until the attacking shark came within less than 10 feet. If bullets failed to faze a persistent predator, he would flatten himself against the ocean floor. In a 1995 Surfer Magazine article, Roberts said being buzzed by Jaws was like lying on your back on the runway as a 747 jet takes off over you. If that wasn't gnarly enough, Roberts was nearsighted. If a shark was stalking him more than 30 yards away, it might as well have been the U.S. synchronized swim team for all he knew.

Surviving long dives in Downtown Dorsal Fin without sustaining even a nibble made Roberts and dive partner Brian Price philosophical.

"We did a lot of little things to lower the risk," Price said. "But in the end we believed the best way to avoid an attack was not to fear one, because the sharks seemed to sense that."

The '90s weren't just good to Kelly Slater. Roberts and Price lived the dream, working just nine months a year diving at the Farallons and packing warm-water pits around the world during the other three. The success gave the sometimes depressive Roberts a reason to believe in himself. At the height of his career, circa 1994, he positively pinged confidence.

"The Farallons were Joel's source of meaning and self-worth," said Don Hartley, a former tender on The Deeper Blue. "Nothing else he could do for a living would ever match that."

Working the Farallons was sometimes play, too, with the islands' overflowing abundance of sea life offering some unusual playmates. During harvest season one year, while diving off Southeast Farallon, Roberts and Price noticed an adolescent harbor seal watching them. After some observation, the little guy started helping, leading them to secret abalone stashes of his. When the divers had the maximum 168 abalones the license allowed them and had to leave, the disappointed seal followed the boat for some time.

Roberts' willingness to work alongside great white sharks attracted the attention of the Discovery Channel, CNN, Surfer and The Surfer's Journal. The more gifts the sea bestowed upon him, the more he gave back to friends and family and to the source of his good fortune, the abalone. He served on a committee to advise the State of California on how to preserve the disappearing species, helped reseeding efforts in the Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuary and spearheaded new technology in abalone farming.

Roberts got into drugs naively, as most addicts do. He suffered chronic back pain from the long days of wrenching a pry bar at depth while wearing a weight belt. He found relief in painkillers, seemingly not just for his sore back, but for the nagging ache in his soul. In early 1999, he was caught forging prescriptions and served three months in Santa Cruz County Jail. "Friends" he made there introduced him to heroin.

By 1996, whenever The Deeper Blue was parked ringside at Maverick's, Price was most often at the helm instead of Roberts, who was elsewhere self-medicating. His high income from diving fanned the flames of his addiction, and attracted a horde of like-afflicted enablers. So in 1997, when the California Fish and Game Commission banned commercial abalone diving statewide, including in the Farallon Islands, Roberts fell quickly into dire straits.

Roberts and Price, who holds a degree in marine biology from UC Santa Cruz, fought the ban, producing data contradicting the commission's assertion that the fishery was depleted. Despite never diving the islands to see for themselves, the regulatory body denied all appeals, and the decision stood.

Like a shark de-finned, a stunned and stung Roberts nosed around in search of a new source of financial and emotional sustenance from 1997 to 2000. Nothing he found matched that of his beloved Farallons, where he had seen his best self reflected back to him in the mirrored surface of its ice-blue waters.

"Some people are born astronauts," Price said. "They're not happy unless they are in space. Diving the Farallons was Joel's space walk. When they took that away from him, they took away the source of everything that was good in his life."

Roberts' timeline for finding lucrative and meaningful work was accelerated by his drug addition and a desperate desire to be back in the water. In 1999, he resorted to poaching abalone by himself during night raids far out on the Sonoma Coast. To evade Fish and Game, he dove in remote coves under the cover of darkness in huge surf, often staying out 8-10 hours or until he was out of air and came in, bags filled with abalone hanging from him like curtains.

The legal limit imposed on sport divers north of the Golden Gate Bridge in 1999 was four abalone per day (it has since been reduced to three). Back then, a dozen abalones drew as much as $1,000 on the black market, more than double their worth before the 1997 ban. In 2000, Roberts was arrested and charged by Fish and Game for possession of 129 abalone with the intent to sell. To set an example, a Sonoma County judge sentenced him to 3? years at the maximum security Susanville Federal Prison, where he celled with the worst of the worst.

"They put him in there with murders, rapists, child molesters, you name it," said his father, Bud Roberts. "There were riots all the time. Half the time I would show up to visit Joel and they would send me away because there had been a murder or brawl or something."

After his release from prison in 2003, Roberts tried desperately to claw his way back to the surface after what amounted to the two-wave hold-down of his life, but he never made it.

"He limped back to Santa Cruz, but he never recovered," his father said. "He was too far gone from everything and wasn't able to move past it."

Old drug habits die hardest, and after prison Roberts rejoined the junkie circuit.

He burned most of the bridges his great kindness and generosity had built years before and eventually became homeless. After his mother Liza committed suicide (she had lost her younger son, Jeffrey, to a car accident), Roberts' aunt Margie took him back to live with her in Boston. In 2013, Margie retired in Florida. Roberts stayed behind to try and make it on his own, but he struggled to establish regular work and housing.

When Roberts died in the Boston suburb of Quincy, he was living in the woods behind a convenience store. He had purchased a quart-sized can of Sterno camping fuel to keep his fire going all night during one of the coldest East Coast winters on record. He was killed when the can, placed too close to the flames, exploded and covered him and his sleeping bag in burning fuel.

When news of his passing reached Santa Cruz, a group of his friends met on the Westside to remember "El G." Photos of Roberts at the helm of The Deeper Blue off West Cliff Drive in the early 1990s served as a kind of resurrection, the reflection of a sparkling sea once again filling his eyes. His impish cackle was echoed in the laughter of those who knew and loved him. While no one denied that he had made poor decisions, even committed crimes, the overriding sentiment was sadness over the loss of yet another.

"At least he is finally free," said Elizabeth Kracht, another of Roberts' meditation friends who corresponded with Roberts often when he was at Susanville.

Others expressed a sense of relief that his spirit was no longer a captive of his body's vices. They liked to think he was at last where he had always yearned most to be: submerged in the deep, blue water off the Farallon Islands, on a forever space walk in the sea.

Author's note: A local memorial for Roberts is slated for August, but a site, date and time haven't yet been decided.